“Slave” Leia

anghraine:

mazarinedrake:

catie-does-things:

tiffanarchy:

entropic-dissonance:

>strong female
>appears to be damsel in distress
>is actually part of a well calculated plot to rescue boyfriend
>single-handedly kills the most powerful gangster on the planet, by choking him to death.
>somehow is

problematic.

#FakeGeekSJWs

For the most part, what people actually find problematic about “Slave Leia” is less how that part of the movie played out, and more how the metal bikini has been used both in merchandising/marketing and in fandom. The image of “Slave Leia” has been consistently used in both official and fan art to pander to male sexual fantasies, and the fact that generations of fanboys have been taught to find Leia most appealing when she is literally held in chains as a sex slave is indeed problematic.

I’m all for reminding people how much Leia still kicks ass, even when put in that awful, degrading situation, but let’s not pretend there was nothing awful or degrading about it.

Carrie Fisher has spoken out numerous times about how the use of her likeness in the slave bikini for merchandising has made her uncomfortable and contributed to the harassment she’s experienced from male “fans.” Leia kicks ass, sure, but she’s still just a fictional character. The real woman behind her feels degraded by the slave bikini, and I think that’s something important to keep in mind. 

The merchandising and harassment aren’t Carrie Fisher’s only problems with it, either. She felt uncomfortable and diminished acting it in the first place for various reasons:

– She had to lose even more weight so that she didn’t show any trace of unsexy body fat or folds

– She had to suck in her stomach for the same reason and could hardly breathe

– Wearing the bikini was deeply uncomfortable, and the people around her could see every part of her body 

–

“In Return of the Jedi, she gets to be more feminine, more supportive, more affectionate. But let’s not forget that these movies are basically boys’ fantasies. So the other way they made her more female in this one was to have her take off her clothes.”

– 

“The thing that killed me about this setup was, okay, you put me in this bathing suit – but then I have to stop talking from here on? Strip me, and I’m silent! I am defiant with everyone else – Tarkin, Darth Vader – but this slug really shuts me up. Any defiance I had in the other movies, all gone.”

– 

“When Princess Leia loses her clothes, she loses her ability to speak.”  

– 

I was crazed that day! I came in and looked at the script pages and George was off ill. I said, “Excuse me, but you guys take my clothes off then chain me up. After two films where I’m not afraid of Vader or Tarkin, why should I be afraid of a slug? …At that point I was amazed that Leia would just sit there, in those skimpy clothes, saying practically nothing. The only way they could justify that, I told them, was if Jabba pulled my chains real tight so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see my character not talking.”

That’s not even getting into how the objection to slave Leia is largely Doylist, not Watsonian. Nobody thinks that, in-story, Leia is showing herself to be anything but a badass. But on the meta-level, it’s perfectly legit to ask why the story was constructed in such a way as to render her silent (but sexy~) for a substantial chunk of the movie, why it’s so very important that Leia be degraded, humiliated, and subjected to thinly veiled rape threats to show that she’s a badass, when that’s been persistently shown without any of those things. It tells us nothing new about Leia. It has no effect on her character, or any one else’s. Nobody mentions it again, and the rest of the movie so divorced from it in tone and plot that it might as well have not happened for all the difference it makes.

Moreover, her enslavement was not part of the plan. She showed up in a bounty hunter disguise that in fact concealed every inch of her. There’s no reason she couldn’t have stayed in that disguise, waiting to act until Luke showed up and the plan kicked into gear–what Lando did. If she’d actually succeeded in getting Han out, she wouldn’t have even been there when hell broke loose. It’s sheer chance that Jabba, a giant amorphous slug, inexplicably has a sordid interest in attractive humanoid women and happens to keep her chained at his side.